Keith Joseph
Secretary of State for Industry | |||||||||||||||
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In office 4 May 1979 – 11 September 1981 | |||||||||||||||
Prime Minister | Margaret Thatcher | ||||||||||||||
Preceded by | Eric Varley | ||||||||||||||
Succeeded by | Patrick Jenkin | ||||||||||||||
Secretary of State for Health and Social Services | |||||||||||||||
In office 20 June 1970 – 4 March 1974 | |||||||||||||||
Prime Minister | Edward Heath | ||||||||||||||
Preceded by | Richard Crossman | ||||||||||||||
Succeeded by | Barbara Castle | ||||||||||||||
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Personal details | |||||||||||||||
Born | Keith Sinjohn Joseph[1] 17 January 1918 London, United Kingdom | ||||||||||||||
Died | 10 December 1994 London, United Kingdom | (aged 76)||||||||||||||
Political party | Conservative | ||||||||||||||
Spouses | Hellen Guggenheimer
(m. 1951; div. 1985)Yolanda Castro Sherriff
(m. 1990) | ||||||||||||||
Parent |
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Unit | Royal Artillery | ||||||||||||||
Battles/wars | World War II | ||||||||||||||
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Keith Sinjohn Joseph, Baron Joseph,
Keith Joseph introduced the concept of the social market economy into Britain, an economic and social system inspired by Christian democracy.[3] He also co-founded the Centre for Policy Studies writing its first publication: Why Britain needs a Social Market Economy.[4]
Early life
Joseph was born in Westminster, London, to a wealthy and influential family, the son of Edna Cicely (Phillips) and Samuel Joseph. His father headed the vast family construction and project-management company, Bovis, and was Lord Mayor of London in 1942–3. At the end of his term he was created a baronet.[5] Joseph's family was Jewish.[6]
On the death of his father on 4 October 1944, 26-year-old Keith inherited the baronetcy.[citation needed]
Education and academic career
Joseph was educated at
Early career
During World War II, Joseph served as a captain in the Royal Artillery, and suffered a minor wound during German shelling of his company's headquarters in Italy, as well as being mentioned in dispatches. After the end of the war, he was called to the Bar (Middle Temple). Following his father, he was elected as an Alderman of the City of London. He was a Director of Bovis, becoming chairman in 1958, and became an underwriter at Lloyd's of London. In 1945, Joseph joined the leadership of the Post-War Orphans’ Committee of the Central British Fund for German Jewry (now World Jewish Relief).[8]
Member of Parliament
This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2023) |
He failed to be elected to the marginal seat of Barons Court in West London by 125 votes in the 1955 election.
He was elected to parliament in a by-election for Leeds North East in February 1956. He was swiftly appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary.
In government
Following 1959, Joseph had several junior posts in the
Social Services
In opposition, Joseph was spokesman on Social Services, and then on Labour under Edward Heath. He was one of twelve founder members of the National Council for the Single Woman and Her Dependants on 15 December 1965.
According to Tim Cook's The History of the Carers' Movement, Joseph and
Trade spokesman
Despite Joseph's reputation as a right-winger, Heath promoted him to Trade spokesman in 1967, where he had an important role in policy development. In the run-up to the
After the Conservatives won the election, Joseph was made
1974
Following the election defeat of February 1974, Joseph worked with Margaret Thatcher to set up the Centre for Policy Studies, a think-tank to develop policies for the new free-market Conservatism that they both favoured. Joseph became interested in the economic theory of monetarism as formulated by Milton Friedman and persuaded Thatcher to support it.[9]
Despite still being a member of Heath's Shadow Cabinet, Joseph was openly critical of his government's record. In 1976, Joseph delivered his famous Stockton lecture on the economy Monetarism Is Not Enough in which he sought to discredit previously dominant Keynesian economic strategies and contrasted wealth-producing sectors in an economy, such as manufacturing, with the service sector and government, which tend to be wealth-consuming. He contended that an economy begins to decline as its wealth-producing sector shrinks.[10]
Many on the right wing of the Conservative Party looked to Joseph to challenge Heath for the leadership, but his chances declined following a controversial speech on 19 October 1974. It covered a variety of
The notion of the "cycle of deprivation" holding down poor people was the basis of his speech.[12] He linked it to current theories of the culture of poverty, especially to the chaotic lifestyle of the poorest people. However, he suggested that poor people should stop having so many children. In his highly publicised speech at Edgbaston, he reflected on the moral and spiritual state of Britain:
A high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world ... Some are of low intelligence, most of low educational attainment. They are unlikely to be able to give children the stable emotional background, the consistent combination of love and firmness ... They are producing problem children ... The balance of our human stock, is threatened.[13]
The outrage, despite his repeated apologies, in reaction to his speech sharply undercut Joseph's campaign to replace Heath as party leader. The speech was not largely written by
Thatcher
Joseph withdrew from the contest against Heath and endorsed Thatcher. She had been eager to run but had backed Joseph.
He now became a major advisor. Thatcher later referred to Joseph as her closest political friend, and they both moved sharply to the right. His overnight conversion to free-market, small-government policies "had the force of a religious conversion".[17] In 1975, he said:
It was only in April 1974 that I was converted to Conservatism. (I had thought I was a Conservative but I now see that I was not really one at all.)[18]
This remark expressed Joseph's sense of failure during multiple Conservative governments that had automatically followed the post-war consensus of a welfare state with strong labour unions. Their policies to stabilise the economy retained government control on industries and created an intricate system to control wages and dividends. In the eyes of Thatcher and Joseph, that pragmatic approach was contrary to the true "Conservative" ideology. As he had done a great deal to promote Thatcher, when she won the leadership in 1975, she determined to put him in a position that would facilitate a profound influence on Conservative Party policy.
In Thatcher's Shadow cabinet, Joseph wanted to be Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, but that was impossible since his notorious 1974 speech. Instead, he was given overall responsibility for Policy and Research. He had a large impact on the Conservative manifesto for the 1979 election, but frequently, a compromise had to be reached with Heath's more moderate supporters, such as Jim Prior.
Thatcher named Joseph
Secretary of State for Education and Science
As Thatcher's
His attempts to reform teachers' pay and bring in new contracts were opposed by the trade unions and led to a series of one-day strikes.
In 1984, his public spending negotiations with his Treasury colleagues resulted in a proposed plan for extra research funding for universities financed through the curtailment of financial support to students who were dependent children of more affluent parents. That plan provoked heated opposition from fellow members of the Cabinet (particularly, Cecil Parkinson) and a compromise plan was found necessary to secure consensus. The compromise involved the abandonment of Joseph's plan to levy tuition fees but preserved his aspiration to abolish the minimum grant. The resulting loss to research funding was halved by a concession of further revenue by the Treasury team.
Joseph emerged unscathed from the Brighton hotel bombing during the Conservative Party Conference in 1984.
In 1985, he published a White Paper on the university sector, The Development of Higher Education into the 1990s. It advocated an appraisal system to assess the relative quality of research and foresaw a retrenchment in the size of the higher education sector. Both proposals were controversial.
Joseph was the primary influence on the Education (No. 2) Act 1986, enacted soon after his resignation as secretary, which abolished corporal punishment in most schools, established regular parents' meetings, and increased parents' influence in school governance.[19][20]
Backbenches, retirement and peerage
Joseph stepped down from the Cabinet in 1986, and retired from Parliament at the 1987 election. He was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1986.[21]
He received a life peerage in the dissolution honours, being created Baron Joseph, of Portsoken in the City of London on 12 October 1987.[22]
Joseph died on 10 December 1994.[23]
30-year rule and official documents
At the end of 2011, the release of confidential documents under the UK Government's
Legacy
Joseph's speech Monetarism is Not Enough was described by Margaret Thatcher as "one of the very few speeches which have fundamentally affected a political generation's way of thinking."[25]
Joseph's political achievement was in pioneering the application of monetarist economics to British political economics, and in developing what would later become known as 'Thatcherism'. He knew his own limitations, remarking of the prospect of his becoming Leader of the Conservative Party that "it would have been a disaster for the party, country, and me", and he rated himself a failure in office.[citation needed]
The Sir Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture is held annually by the Centre for Policy Studies.[26]
Personal life
Joseph was married twice: firstly, in 1951 to Hellen Guggenheimer, with whom he had four children. They separated in 1978,[27] finally divorcing in 1985.[28] In 1990 he married Yolanda Sheriff (née Castro), whom he had known since the 1940s.[28]
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References
- OCLC 185201487. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
- ^ "Keith Joseph, the father of Thatcherism, 'was autistic' claims". The Independent. 12 July 2006.
- ^ Birnie, Esmond. "Christianity and the Social Market Economy in Britain, Germany and Northern Ireland" (PDF). biblicalstudies.org.uk. Retrieved 21 October 2019.
- ISBN 9780748632688. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-684-82975-3. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
- ^ "Commanding Heights : Lord Ralph Harris | on PBS". PBS.
- ^ "Sir Keith Joseph and the Market Economy - Professor Vernon Bogdanor". YouTube. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021.
- ^ Gottlieb, Amy Zahl. Men of Vision: Anglo-Jewry's Aid to Victims of the Nazi Regime, 1933–1945. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998, p.185
- ^ Margaret Thatcher acknowledged his influence on her intellectual evolution, especially in her book, The Path to Power, 1995
- ^ Sir Keith Joseph, Centre for Policy Studies (5 April 1976).Stockton Lecture, Monetarism Is Not Enough, with foreword by Margaret Thatcher. (Barry Rose Pub.) Margaret Thatcher Foundation (2006); David Friedman, New America Foundation (15 June 2002). No Light at the End of the Tunnel Archived 19 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine Los Angeles Times.
- ^ Aitken, Ian (29 September 2001). "Obituary: Arthur Wynn". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 12 May 2009.
- ISBN 9780335238811.
- ^ Halcrow, p 83
- ^ Andrew Denham and Mark Garnett, Keith Joseph (Acumen, 2002), p. 265.
- ^ Moore, Thatcher, 1:272-4
- ^ Jonathan Sumption, Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, 17.40
- ^ Andrew Marr, A History of Modern Britain (2007) p 355
- ISBN 9780191637087.
- ISBN 9780415347761.
- ^ Archbold, Claire (2000). "Family Law-Making and Human Rights in the United Kingdom". In Maclean, Mavis (ed.). Making Law for Families. Oxford and Portland: Hart. pp. 185–208: 196.
- ^ "No. 50547". The London Gazette. 10 June 1986. p. 7729.
- ^ "No. 51092". The London Gazette. 15 October 1987. p. 12747.
- ^ Biffen, John (12 December 1994). "Keith Joseph obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
- ^ a b Gainsbury, Sally (30 December 2011). "Tories debated letting Liverpool 'decline'". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 10 December 2022. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
- ^ Margaret Thatcher The Path to Power (London 1995), p. 255
- ^ "The Sir Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture 2022".
- ^ "Keith Joseph and wife to part". Glasgow Herald. 30 March 1978. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55063. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
Sources
- Denham, Andrew and Mark Garnett. Keith Joseph (Acumen, 2002)
- Halcrow, Morrison. Keith Joseph: A Single Mind (Macmillan, 1989)
- Harrison, Brian. "Mrs. Thatcher and the Intellectuals," Twentieth Century British History (1994) 5#2 pp 206–245.
- Harrison, Brian. "Joseph, Keith Sinjohn, Baron Joseph (1918–1994)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2011 accessed 6 June 2013
- Moore, Charles. Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands (2013)
- O'Connell, Jeffrey and Thomas E. O'Connell. "Global Raising and Razing of Statism: The Mirror Roles of Two Law-Trained Englishmen – William Beveridge and Keith Joseph," Journal of Law & Politics (2000) 16#3 pp 639–662.